No purchase necessary to enter. Contest begins on September 12, 2012 and ends on September 26, 2012 at noon PST. You must be 18 years or older to participate or have permission from a parent or legal guardian. By participating you confirm that you have your parent’s or legal guardian’s consent. The winner will be selected by the Ruche team and announced on our blog and Facebook page by October 1, 2012. Upon winning, you grant permission to Ruche to use your name, voice, and artwork for publicity and promotional purposes and therefore waive all your associated rights.

It says "The winner will be selected by the Ruche team and announced on our blog and Facebook page by August 1, 2012." I am sure this is probably a typo. Can you inform when's the actual announcement date.

No gift card prize for the winner? I know this isn't your intention, but art contests where the company gets to use the artist's work in exchange for "exposure" are sort of cheating the artist. You get to use their work, and their reward is merely you giving them credit for it, which is something you should be doing anyway. It's not an even exchange.

To put it into perspective, imagine someone saying "I want a new house, so I'm gonna have a contest. Whoever builds the best house gets to have me live in it! And I'll let everyone know they built the house, so they get free publicity."

It's an extreme example, but these sorts of art contests are doing the same thing. For some reason, in the creative industry most people don't look at it the same.

Look at it as if you are buying the rights to distribute the winner's art. If you just gave them a gift card, you'd still be getting their art at a low price, but they'd at least get a little something in return.

[…] I wanted to share with all of my lovely readers. I just recently entered a piece of art into the Ruche Award-Winning Artwork Contest. If you want to enter, the contest is still going until 9/26,! If my piece is chosen it will be […]